


From the Ashes

by WarriorRuscindol



Category: GoldenEye (1995), James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types
Genre: A goldeneye fixit, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Exept goldeneye doesnt happen and i totally fudge the timeline, Hurt/Comfort, I dont know what happened this thing is writing itself, Multi, Polyamory, Torture (not graphic), i can't tag for toffee, introspective car journeys, metions of Silva, my dodgy grasp of geography, my love for alec is undying, unexpected flashbacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26687119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WarriorRuscindol/pseuds/WarriorRuscindol
Summary: “Uhh Q, an emergency beacon just activated from the safehouse in Serebryanka, apparently an agent has burst in in bad shape and he’s not showing up on the database.”“Not showing up as in, shouldn’t be in the region, or not there at all?”
Relationships: James Bond/Alec Trevelyan, James Bond/Q, James Bond/Q/Alec Trevelyan
Comments: 40
Kudos: 191





	1. Never Let Me Down Again

It was only quarter past seven in the morning, and Q branch was already a hive of organised chaos.

Q was, as usual centred in the storm of techies, trays of equipment for incoming agents, plasma screens of mission specs, and the residual chaos of the Silva incident. Toast in one hand and earl grey tea in front of him, Q started to review the night-shift’s notes.

_Bollocks. The CIA were bitching about his requests for extra background on their embassy staff, 003 had fucked up on the Beirut job, lost his fucking phone and now needed a “plus-one with a gun by tomorrow”, the Whitehall bureaucrats wanted a review, and SigInt had detected yet another weird heat signal in Siberia._

Mallory had only been in post for three months and had already requested a complete overhaul of the 00 programme, with Q and his more senior minions now in the ear of every agent running a shallow cover or short term missions, and as such the department was bursting at the seams. Although, he had to admit, there had been a massive reduction in casualties both with the service and civilian, and the boost to the budget from less destroyed tech was certainly proving helpful. All in all, none too bad, even if he did have to deal with James’ abysmal paperwork at least three cups of tea less caffeinated than he would usually prefer.

007 had been particularly troublesome of late. Having only just had the pins removed from his knee after wrecking it at Skyfall, Bond had been practically clawing at the walls to be allowed to return to active duty. The resulting haunting of Q branch by a bored double 0 had terrified some of the less experienced techies witless, and they had ended up doubling the amount of ammo normally used on the testing ranges. This was of course a trivial matter compared to Bond’s incorrigible flirting with the quartermaster, who matched him for every increasingly dirty joke and extravagant lunch. There was now a dedicated page on Eve Moneypenny’s books as to the number of weeks before they started arriving at work together. The current favourite was for another 3 weeks, although word was that Tanner had put a huge amount on them holding off until the new tax year. Either way, some lucky sod from accounting was likely to win a fortune.

A junior tech from the NE Europe desk (who were currently crammed onto two tables stolen from the cafeteria) stood up on her chair and waved, balancing her keyboard across one elbow.

“Uhh Q, an emergency beacon just activated from the safehouse in Serebryanka, apparently an agent has burst in in bad shape and he’s not showing up on the database.”

“Not showing up as in, shouldn’t be in the region, or not there at all?” With deft keystrokes Q brought up the active duty roster for the area onto the screen behind his desk. “There are more than 40 minor agents and informants in the region and none of them has missed a check-in in the last 36 hours, half of which I answered myself.”

She glanced down at the screen and scrabbled to type a message to the housekeeper, narrowly avoiding knocking over a pile of documents as her chair spun. “Apparently he’s not showing up at all, and he cant have just given the wrong ID number cause there ‘s nobody on the manifest fitting his description, I quote – ‘tall, long blondish hair, lots of scars. Looks like he used to be bulky but has lost loads of weight’. Not a helpful description, but apparently he’s pacing and dripping blood on the carpet which they’re not hugely pleased about.”

The blond minion next to her peeked up from behind his large monitor. “I’ve been cross referencing with all our operations centres across Lithuania and Belarus. I can confirm that no one has had an agent go missing, request leave, make a doctors appointment or even need a plaster as far as they are aware. The office in Vilnius is starting another status check but that’s going to take at least an hour to complete let alone verify.”

"Remind me again where that house is? I’m not an expert in old soviet geography” Q frowned at the map on the wall, its ragged corners and colour-coded drawing pins at odds with the rest of the room’s advanced systems.

“South East Minsk, it’s near one of the old arms caches from the Cold War.” The room hushed as James Bond strode in. Even unarmed he could silence a room; now, with a rifle case slung over one shoulder of an immaculate Saville Row suit, he seemed to exude deadly cold across the room.

“It’s in one of the old khrushchyovka on the edge of the district. Wasn’t the easiest cover in the world, the sightlines are nearly nonexistent, even if there are plenty of balconies to climb. Hasn’t been active in years.”

Q arched an eyebrow at him over is tea. “007, how nice of you to drop in. Any wisdom of the ancients to impart to us today?”

James huffed and balanced the rifle on top of the Q branch ‘Can’t Be Arsed’ filing cabinet.

“Yes. Start searching for retired senior agents in the region; any problems and they’ll be trying to go to ground in the old spots. That house wasn’t available to informants so there shouldn’t be many.”

Q stuck his now rather cold toast in his mouth and started the file programme search. “5 agents, most now in Estonia, one on the Polish border. None of them were officially working in the region in the right time frame but I guess it pays to check. Michael would you do the honours?”

Meanwhile, Bond had been flicking between the profiles of the retired agents and Q’s Map of the Minions.

“Jacie, how old do they reckon he is?” She scrolled through her messages quickly. “Two secs. Umm, early 40s max, apparently our mystery man is too whacked to be able to judge properly.”

”Call this time, and get them to tell him ‘Boothroyd has dropped his file cards again, just tell us your name so the old codger shuts up’”

Jacie snickered and picked up the secure line on the desk. She hummed as she entered the encryption key, then repeated the message in rapid Russian.

“Bloody hell that worked quick.” she scrambled up onto the chair again and bellowed.

“Can anyone round here identify an _Alec Trevelyan_?”

Bond froze, one hand on Qs desk. All activity in the room seemed to halt with him.

“That’s impossible” he ground out through gritted teeth. “Alec Trevelyan died 15 years ago. I good as killed him myself.”

The minion shrank down onto her chair. Q silently shifted the call onto the central speakerphone.

The temperature fell by degrees as Bond hit the call button.

“…Alec”

“Jamesy?”

Bond blanched, and the call cut dead.


	2. Brennisteinn

Bond rubbed the condensation off the inside of the windscreen with his coat sleeve and continued scowling at the door to the safehouse. Q sighed and checked the time for what felt like the tenth time in so many minutes. They had driven randomly round Minsk for hours, changing vehicle 3 times and taking every possible back route and residential road, before finally pulling into the street in sight of the safehouse door, and Q was beginning to lose patience with Bond. Meanwhile James had been convinced that there were greater numbers of undercover police on patrol ever since they left the airport, and was diligently pointing out each dubiously normal person on the corners of supermarkets and cafes. Q had to admit that while he was most certainly right (he’d caught more than one ‘civilian’ watching the shoppers rather too earnestly), in his view they were practically inviting trouble by sitting in the car this long. Avoiding pursuit was one thing, but deliberately waiting longer than normal to make what was supposed to be a simple house call was bound to look suspicious to prying eyes and nosy neighbours.

“It’s time.” Bond growled. “And keep silent while we’re outside, your accent in Russian is too bloody posh for round here.” Q rolled his eyes as the two agents stepped out the car and made their way to the safehouse.

The door was opened by a small mousey woman with thin greying hair. She smiled weakly at them, peering round the edge of the battered wooden door.

“Daniil, Artem, рада тебя видеть! как поживает моя сестра в эти годы?”

Bond smiled tightly. “Сложная как никогда Аня. Мы пришли взять хорошую посуду на ее день рождения.”

Q followed Bond into the apartment. The rooms were tired and showed the age of the building. The brown linoleum floor bubbled and crackled unnervingly, but with crochet blankets over most of the chairs it was rather cosier than old safehouses were wont to be. With the door shut the housekeeper dropped all pretence of calm. Pale under the electric light, she clung to the kitchen countertop, shaking visibly. “Он в задней комнате. Будь осторожен, у него один из моих ножей.”

Bond set one hand on the gun holster at the small of his back, and nodded at Q to stand behind where the door would open. He mouthed a count down. _3…2…1,_ Q pulled the door open silently. Bond waited a beat then stepped into the doorway.

The sight that met them had Q wishing that they could have flown in with a full medic team. Dressed in filthy, ragged clothes, eyes glazed and fever bright from exhaustion, Alec leant heavily against the wall facing the door, kitchen knife brandished in one hand, other hand not quite covering the bullet wound to his side, which was slowly dripping rivulets of blood down the paintwork. The two assassins stilled as they stared at each other. Q glanced from the gunshot to the innumerable cuts and contusions and started mentally triaging Alec as best he could from the doorway.

_Bloody fucking politics. Almost any other country in Europe and they could just swan in with a full medic team and a helicopter. No such deal with Belarus, MI6 certainly couldn’t admit to having personnel there, even accidentally, let alone evacuate them with a military operation._

Alec brought the knife down to his side but kept his grip tight. Bond stiffened, but let go of his gun as the injured agent pushed himself off the wall. Alec grinned feverishly, the scars on his cheek twisting lopsidedly.

“Hey Jamesy, nice limp. Think that ‘grizzled and dangerous’ will work better on the girls than my boyish charms?” His voice was hoarse and scratchy with disuse

Bond eyed him warily. From his view from the doorway, Q could tell that James was tenser than a hawser. At this point he was practically vibrating with pent up emotion. Alec seemed not to have noticed, either he was a bloody good actor or, as Q suspected, the fact he was rapidly losing his grip on the wound in his side was probably taking up much of his current dregs of consciousness.

Finally, with the anger only born of guilt, Bond exploded. “What the _fuck_ happened Alec? We were supposed to blow the thing up and exfil, not _confront_ the bastard!”

Alec took a step forward, eyes widening in shock as the last of the colour drained from his face.

“That _bitch_. She said you _knew._ And did fucking _nothing!_ ”

At this moment, without the support of the wall blood loss took over and he pitched forward. Bond lunged forward to catch Alec and the two crashed into the floor. Extricating himself from the pile, Bond pulled his jacket off and started putting pressure on the seeping wound. It had clearly started off as a glancing shot, but had torn open wider. Even through layers of fabric James could tell that it was hot to the touch and probably infected.

“Oh for gods sake Alec, you never dealt with these fast enough. Stupid _stubborn_ bastard. Q get the medi-kit, it’s in the bag under the front seat. _Now_ Q!”

The mutter of a television could be heard through the wall. Q swung the door open wider, face grave.

“Bond you should see this.”

The 6 o clock breaking news flashed onto the screen. A mugshot of Alec, smirking at the camera with a black eye, was centre screen, with a police hotline number. The photo was taken easily 10 years ago, the lack of scars across his face particularly jarring.

“Российские и правительственные власти подтвердили, что беглец, сбежавший три дня назад из тюрьмы строгого режима в Сибири, теперь перебрался в Беларусь. Широкую общественность предупреждают, что он очень опасен и несет ответственность за многочисленные убийства и террористические акты до и после заключения. Установлена линия для оповещения полиции, которая будет отображаться в нижней части экрана во всех последующих трансляциях.”

Q returned with the medi-kit as the report finished, suture kit box under one arm and rifling through the pockets of the rucksack for an H bandage. Bond stared at him grimly.

“You’ll have to drive.”

Q glared. “Are you serious, I’m the one with the official paramedic training.”

Bond sighed and peeled back his jacket to inspect the wound. Alec stirred feebly but made no attempt to move.

“Your stitches might be neater than mine but you don’t know Alec and he certainly doesn’t know you. I’ve stopped the bleeding for now, and there is no way on earth he is going to trust you enough for anything but driving.”

Q grimaced and passed the pack of bandages to him. “Good point, how long do you reckon we have? I’ve already called the helicopter team to meet us over the border”

At that moment the sound of sirens flared into the small room, faded by distance but still loud enough to make Q flinch.

“By the sound of things, I’d say we have about 10 minutes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 - Daniil, Artem, nice to see you! how is my sister doing these years?  
> 2 - Anya is more difficult than ever. We've come to get the good dishes for her birthday.  
> 3 - He's in the back room. Be careful, he has one of my knives.  
> 4 - Russian and government officials have confirmed that the fugitive who escaped three days ago from a maximum security prison in Siberia has now entered Belarus. The general public is warned that he is highly dangerous and is responsible for numerous killings and terrorist attacks before and after incarceration. A police alert line has been set and will be displayed at the bottom of the screen on all subsequent broadcasts.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who commented or gave me kudos! I've concluded that I'll try to post every two weeks or so.


	3. Running Up That Hill

Chapter 3

Q pulled onto main road leaving Minsk, blending seamlessly with the rush hour traffic. The light was fading fast now, and the yellow glow from the inner city sodium lamps reflected dully off the clouds, bathing the city with a deep orange glow.

Alec sprawled across the back seat of the old Volvo, weeks of sleepless nights etched into the bruises and lines of his face. Glancing back, Q couldn’t help but smile slightly at the sight of James crouched in the footwell, quietly knotting a stitch every time the traffic stopped, frowning slightly in concentration. He checked the tension of the sutures then tapped Q on the shoulder.

“Good enough to look hospital sewn?”

Q eased the car forward in the heavy traffic, before leaning through the gap.

“Oh definitely, although I hope we don’t need to test that on the police. There’s a couple of morphine shots in the bag too.”

Bond shook his head, and turned back to rebandaging the wound. “He’s allergic. The lidocaine should last until we get to the border.”

At that moment, a convoy of police cars shrieked past at high speed. Q jumped violently, and gripped the steering wheel tighter.

The police presence had really kicked off after the broadcast, ever since leaving the safehouse they’d been hearing sirens constantly in the distance, but suddenly seeing blue lights larger than life and speeding past the car was a shock to the system.

Any of Q’s lingering feelings about wanting to be in the field when guiding agents through a mission had been thoroughly dissipated by this trip out in the cold. He might have taken the executive self-defence classes, but that didn’t make him in any way qualified to help James if it came to a fight. Pushing down his panic, Q kept the speedometer steady and merged into the motorway traffic heading west. _Keep it together Q, getting pulled over for speeding will only get us all caught faster._

* * *

The force of the air pushed rain in trails down the windscreen. Q scowled at the few flakes of ice that clung round the wipers, and hoped it wouldn’t start to become proper snow. As they had driven further and further out from Minsk the traffic had slowly scattered, and now, hours out into the countryside, Q hadn’t seen another car through the gloom in 40 miles. 

James stared out into the darkness, face thrown into sharp relief by the intermittent streetlamps. Now with a change of clothes, Alec was curled sideways next to him on the bench seat. He hadn’t woken at all since they had left, despite a live transfusion from Bond. At this point he was beginning to seriously worry Q, no matter how many times James checked his pulse.

Q scanned the horizon for tail lights, then flicked on the cruise control.

“James love, I really need to know what the Arkhangelsk mission was.”

Bond dropped his head to rest on the window.

”Do we need to do this now?” 

Q had never heard James sound so tired and care-worn, even after Skyfall. He sighed, unconsciously wrapping an arm round Alec’s shoulders.

“The brief was to blow up the control centre to the dam at Arkhangelsk. Some crazy has-been general from the old soviet command had taken a few disgruntled troops and held the area under siege. They wanted some glorious uprising to occur and rebuild the union, and somehow threatening to open the dam and flood the whole valley seemed a good way of achieving this. This of course would destroy all the oil pipelines that went to the UK, and so M decided that the best course of action was for me and Alec to kill the bugger and blow up the controls so no one could open the damn thing.”

He sighed, and the darkness seemed to gather in, shrouding the two figures in black. Q waited silently, not daring to interrupt him and break James’ resolve.

“It was fucked from the start. We hadn’t even got complete blueprints for place, despite it being a bombing target for the Vulcans. I had the glorious job of crawling through the ceiling and rigging the place, while ‘Yosha was supposed to corner the old bastard and quietly off him.”

Bitterness had slowly crept into his voice, and now the weight of guilt and old grief were palpable in the quiet of the car.

“I’d set the charges, there was three minutes on the clock to check each others work and exfil. I’d cut the time down, as all the Russian boys were getting antsy and starting to search the place. Turns out they had good reason.

The only time in my life I didn’t know what to do, my Alec was there in the middle of them all, facing off with that bloody general. I just watched as he raved about the ‘betrayal of the people’ and the timer counted down. I thought the fire killed him, but it might as well have been my hands.”

_Jesus, fifteen years of believing that your best friend and lover was dead through your own fault._ Q was convinced he would have gone mad.

“I’m so sorry James.” Q could feel emptiness of the words in the air.

James shook his head. “Wasn’t your mission” he said quietly.

* * *

The brilliant blue glow of police lightbars crept over the horizon, followed soon after by the white and yellow of a toll barrier. _Oh for god’s sake, we were doing so well._

Bond leant forward onto the console, chucking their Belarusian passports onto the passenger seat.

“The tourist alibi is too weak, this lot will try and escort us back to Minsk for ‘protection’, and then it’ll take days before we can get back to civilization.”

Q sniffed in amusement. “Alright, hospital story it is. What’s the nearest hamlet to here? Might be worth having a destination they likely can’t easily telephone.”

Bond frowned at the road map. “Go for Novoselki. There can’t be more than 100 people somewhere that small.”

There was no time to discuss the plan further, as they were waved over by the police to a checkpoint on the right.

“Паспорта и водительские права, пожалуйста”

Q passed them out the window, and waited as the officer gave them a cursory glance.

“какова цель вашего путешествия?”

“отбросив этого идиота обратно к своей матери. Чертовски пьяный умудрился получить удар ножом вполбутылки водки.”

The cop laughed, and handed back their papers.

"У нас у всех есть такой кузен. Куда ты направляешься, сегодня не время для дальних путешествий".

"Новоселки"

"Очень хорошо".

As he stepped back to wave them through, another officer shouted from the next bay, where he had been glaring at them from his perch on the crash barrier. Bond moved his hand slowly back to his gun.

"Эй! Ельцин, какого черта ты делаешь, старый дурак, спящий парень похож на нашего беглеца. Дай мневзглянуть на его паспорт."

The older cop folded his arms. Q held his breath and silently let the handbrake down. He hoped that the fuel in the car would last if they ended up in some high speed chase.

"Уверен, вы бы знали, учитывая, что ‘наш беглец’ выглядит как половина всего русского населения.”

At this point the other officer pulled out his radio and brandished it at Yeltsin. "Я доложу о тебе, коррумпированный ублюдок."

As the two officers continued to shout at each other, Yeltsin gave the signal to go from behind his back.

Q flinched as they accelerated away faster than he’d intended. _Oh bollocks, way to make us look suspicious as fuck Q._ Despite the amount of attention they must have attracted, surprisingly enough no one had followed them down the stretch of road.

Alec stirred slightly as the lights from the checkpoint faded into the distance, wincing slightly in his sleep as the fresher burns down his arm rubbed against the seat back.

“I’m beginning to think that the fire in Siberia that SigInt detected is somehow related to Alec.”

Bond hummed quietly. “You’re probably right. There was a reason the SBS called him Captain Chaos.”

Q grinned despite himself. “What on earth did he do to get that gem?”

James paused, and Q had the momentary feeling he’d overstepped the mark. After what felt like an age, he laughed to himself, and the tension dissipated like snow off the windscreen.

“If there was an opportunity to blow anything up, then Alec’s goal was to make it as spectacular as possible, even if it was the fourth microwave we’d bought in a year. There was a training exercise soon after Alec joined up where we had to scupper an old survey ship, and of course he had to completely freak out the brass by practically ripping it in half with thermite, and belting out ‘I’m a Pirate King’ as we came back to dock.”

Q snorted and shook his head.

“Apparently the acoustic in my flat could never beat the one in our old dormitory showers. Either way you still end up waking up to Wagner followed by Iron Maiden at half five in the morning. I always told him he should have sung professionally, but apparently explosions paid better.”

Bond lapsed into silence again. They were now only half an hour from the Lithuanian border, and the helicopter crew had confirmed their landing site, miles off road through farmland, in order to avoid the official border patrol.

As he guided the car over the rough terrain, Q couldn’t help but wonder why Alec’s file hadn’t turned up when they were searching the files back at Six. Even when an agent was killed in action their operations could at least be found, even if only as a black ops file marker. Somehow, Alec Trevelyan’s existence had been entirely wiped from his systems.

The aircrew had cut through the wire across the field boundary, and Q rolled the car across the slight ditch and out of Belarus without a hitch.

Translations

“Паспорта и водительские права, пожалуйста” - "Passports and driver's licence please"

“какова цель вашего путешествия” - "What is the purpose of your journey?"

“отбросив этого идиота обратно к своей матери. Чертовски пьяный умудрился получить удар ножом вполбутылки водки.” - "Taking this idiot back to his mother. The bloody drunk managed to get himself stabbed with half a vodka bottle."

"У нас у всех есть такой кузен. Куда ты направляешься, сегодня не время для дальних путешествий". - "We all have a cousin like that. Where are you headed, tonight is not the time for long journeys."

"Новоселки" - "Novoselki"

"Очень хорошо". - "Very well"

"Эй! Ельцин, какого черта ты делаешь, старый дурак, спящий парень похож на нашего беглеца. Дай мневзглянуть на его паспорт." - "Hey! Yeltsin, what the hell are you doing, you old fool, sleeping guy looks like our fugitive. Let me take a look at his passport."

"Уверен, вы бы знали, учитывая, что ‘наш беглец’ выглядит как половина всего русского населения.” - "I'm sure you would know, given that 'our fugitive' looks like half the entire Russian population."

"Я доложу о тебе, коррумпированный ублюдок." - "I will report you, you corrupt bastard."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this is so late! The last week of school is always crazy.
> 
> On an entirely unrelated note, my writing playlist is here https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1EyQyD2bccO2y9a1en6oFy?si=IyzJadSHRv2iDR8GzWNtWQ if anyone wants it. 
> 
> Thanks for reading as always :)


	4. Life On Mars

Q sat on the table edge, musing in the dark of the observation room. For all the drama of barreling in and out of Belarus, their flight had been largely uneventful, although less than enjoyable. While he could tolerate commercial airliners, the dark confines of a military helicopter made for a less than comforting flight. Q’s worry at Alec’s long stretch of unconsciousness had largely been abated by the crew’s field medic, who in between hanging an iv of antibiotics and checking Bond’s stitching, confirmed that he was seeing the effects of about a week with little to no sleep, and that the litre or so of blood from James had negated most of the blood loss. 

Less than 12 hours later Bond had been sent out on a minor retrieval mission, leaving Q to wrangle mess involving the CIA, and Alec intermittently sleeping and flicking scalpels at the wall in Medical.

The debrief was ostensibly being led by Tanner, SIS’s long-suffering and utterly unflappable chief of staff, with Mallory there to question as he saw fit. As Tanner went through the official recording procedure, Q took a moment to watch the room. Mallory stood at the back of the room, arms folded and frowning slightly as he tried to get a read on Alec. Q knew well enough from countless executive staff meetings that M would far rather pace as he thought, but for the head of the SIS to show any level of weakness to an unknown operative would be unwise in the extreme. That Mallory’s pride as an ex-SAS operative was a contributing factor went without saying. 

Alec slouched back in his seat, hands shoved into the pockets of his black combats. It was clear he was more than well acquainted with interrogations, and was fairly bored by the proceedings. At first glance he had none of the ice-cold deadliness that seemed to follow Bond like a thunderstorm, but Q had the distinct and uncanny impression that Alec was almost more dangerous than James, the air of affable normalcy not quite covering something entirely wild. It was his eyes that gave it away Q thought. That stare could strip flesh from bone.

James and Q sat side by side in the dark. The fluorescent lights from the interrogation room produced a strange greenish-white glow through the glass, turning James’s eyes an icy grey. As Tanner began the interview, Q moved his hand to cover James’ on the table edge.

“I’ll be frank with you Trevelyan, We’ve heard 007’s report on the Arkhangelsk incident, but we have no documentation to record your existence post 2000, barring a death certificate that was backdated to the mission. What the bloody hell happened?”  
“Oh you know, this and that, deep cover with Russian terrorists, few years in Siberia, what can I say.” Alec flashed a boyish smile at the three executives. 

Tanner raised his eyebrows and made a note on the new file. Q noticed, somewhat belatedly, that Alec spoke with a hint of a Russian accent. It was hardly surprising given how long he’d apparently spent in the country, but something about it seemed too natural to be simply a force of habit.

“M wanted an informant with a group that called themselves Goldeneye. Tackiest name ever, but with a wonderful passion for blowing up anything and anyone they could think of that was connected with the ‘corrupting influence of the West’.  
Russia desk had been trying to turn some of their members since the fall of the USSR when they first announced themselves, and considering that any information we could share with the Kremlin would put us in their political good books, it was clearly beyond time to send in my pyromaniac self to build them a few bombs and nudge them towards the loving arms of the FSB. The Arkhangelsk explosion was my foot in the door.”

Tanner frowned. “So 007 blew up Arkhangelsk, you made your entrance into terrorist society, and M got her information drops. None of this explains why Bond thought you were dead, or why you disappeared for a more than a decade. Six can’t afford to be one OO down for that long a mission.”

Even through the two-way mirror, Q could feel the moment Alec let the public school persona drop. 

“Because I was giving her information from the Kremlin.”

The shocked silence in the room was palpable. Tanner stared, astonished at Trevelyan. 

“How on earth was that possible, you entered Russia as a bloody terrorist!”

Alec grimaced. “I was arrested two years in, and given the number of group members they took that day I was pretty convinced that this was my extraction. Instead there was a coded dispatch in my arrest warrant, stating that in 12 hours time evidence would appear that I was in fact an undercover cop. From there I was to pass information to Six via a dead-drop email, detailing everything the Russians knew about our activities.  
The ploy held for much longer than it should in all honesty. There’s only so far you should be able to get as a lowly Russian cop, but the intelligence was good and so M wanted me to keep playing it. Then I started getting military files in my intercepts. At that point I thought there was a high chance that one of the higher-ups had twigged that I wasn’t legit, and was trying to seed the intelligence to throw us off. I left an emergency beacon on the dead drop and less than a day later the SVR came calling.

Mallory butt in from the back of the room. “So you were a reckless fool who got cocky and then got captured.” 

Alec stared Mallory directly in the eyes. “Its funny, the SAS cabal are so proud of their little ‘Lubyanka’ and how utterly impervious they are to torture, but when you’ve actually lost count of the number of times you’ve drowned that week, and the questions churn round and round, you begin to realize its all a game of luck isn’t it? Just hope that they don’t change the pattern, catch you off guard while you’re still throwing your guts up and then suddenly you’ve betrayed every agent from here to Vladivostok.”

The room stilled as the two spies surveyed each other. Finally, after what felt like an age Mallory nodded almost imperceptibly, and seemed to melt back into the shadows of the room. Q let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

Alec leant back to glare at a damp spot in the ceiling. “Anyway, it turns out that after a year or so even the FSB get bored, and so I ended up in a prison camp in Siberia. Believe it or not they gossip as much as boarding school up there, so I heard about your explosion, thought it was time to get out of that place. Took me a fair old while to get all my supplies, but I blew the place up eventually. Then it was just a case of walking till I found one of the logging roads and hitching a ride to the border. I’d rather not have to tab across to Minsk with a GSW again but I got there eventually.”

Tanner clicked off the recording and handed the paperwork for M to finalise.

“Welcome back 006. While I can’t officially return you to active service, I’m sure it’s not going to take you too long to pass the assessment. I would tell you to report to the Quartermaster for an introduction to the new Six, but I think he’s already here with Bond.” 

The sound of Mallory’s pager rang loud and brash in the small room. 

“Oh bollocks, someone told the PM about the business with the Americans. Tanner, would you call the car round?” 

The two spies bustled out the room, mentally preparing for a three hour bureaucratic nightmare  
In the dark of the observation room, James turned to face Q. They kissed gently, and as Q pulled back he realized he would never stop treasuring the trust James gave him, to look so unguarded. 

“I love you, Q”

Q smiled and smoothed James’s fringe back into place. 

“I know you do, and I know that you also love Alec. And I think we’re all more than capable of sharing too.”

James sighed, and it was if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Q laid a hand on his shoulder as they approached the door. 

“Ready?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Im really not doing too well at this regular posting business am I
> 
> Thank you everyone as always :)


	5. Undertow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for a short flashback, its all in italics so skip to 'a new voice' as needed

The day had flashed by after his debrief, a whirlwind of computer screens and cramped tunnels and the deafening roar of 6000 analysts, gun ranges and labs echoing and multiplying underground, underpinned by the constant rumble of tube trains through the walls.

Entering Q branch had been like emerging on another planet. The technology held in that room alone made the 00 programme seem nearly obsolete. Outside his domain Q himself had seemed painfully new, but the way he controlled the hundreds of agents in his branch showed pure steel. All activity seemed to revolve around him, controlling missions and minions and intelligence reports like the conductor of an unruly orchestra. It seemed that the Six he had known for so long had evaporated after the destruction of Vauxhall Cross and the death of M. The atmosphere in the bunker was wary and battle scarred, unmistakably a war footing, although without a flag to call enemy.

An analyst had come sprinting up to Q seconds later, explaining in between breaths that the Americans had started to interfere with a retrieval that 003 had been running. Glancing at the temporary memorial wall that had been painted at the entrance to Q branch, Alec realized with shock that every other 00 he had served with were all now gone. He had completely skipped over his own initials on the list, their existence making him sick to the stomach.

With the promise that Q would be round to James’ flat by midnight, they had drifted between the range and the bars near Whitehall, talking idly about forgettable things. By the time they had made it back to James’ flat he was tipsy and on edge. In the last few hours he had talked more than he had done for several years, and the tide of a decade’s worth of bottled up thoughts was starting to feel like drowning.

James downed his whiskey and picked up the gun he had been cleaning. He fiddled with the pieces, instinctually slotting it together and breaking it apart again.

“I couldn’t believe it, that you were gone. For weeks afterwards I kept turning round to talk to you, or searching for your radio channel. There was so much wrong with that mission love, I couldn’t work out what I did wrong. Where did all the ‘motherland’ stuff come from? There was no other mission on my briefing.”

He didn’t know where the anger came from, but it burned through him like thermite.

“You should have _trusted_ me! It was quite clear I had to infiltrate that group, its not my fault that some bastard blew my cover!

James turned to face him, abandoning the gun on the floor.

“You could have sent me a message somehow! A dead drop, a bloody postcard, anything to say ‘Hey maybe you _didn’t_ kill me in that explosion’

Alec slammed a hand into the wall.

“Oh as if you ever broke cover during an op to message me! Хуй тебе James, you could have _looked_ for me if you were that bothered, or realised that just maybe you might not be privy to all the facts of life and that I was doing my fucking duty!”

“They had a _body_ Alec! I … I identified you myself.”

By the time James looked up again the door had already slammed shut.

Alec stormed down the street. The dying glow of the city made the shadows swim and shift in his vision. Every pace he took away from James’ flat, the more the urge to shoot something built up, forming a dull headache behind his eyes.

James’ words rolled round and round in his mind. _How was it that he was the only one who could remember this mission? Was he imagining things, had the orders he’d been given been fabricated? Were there even any orders at all? He’d passed all the other tests easily, the brass had to have another reason to keep him back from active duty._

He slowed his pace as he entered the underpass, wary of the echo off the wet tiles. His breath misted the air, but after the cold of Siberia he barely noticed the temperature dropping. And there was yet another strange aspect of his cover: MI6 agents were almost always traded by the government, or assassinated before they could give any information to enemy forces. Five years in Siberia without cyanide or a bullet to the head was almost unthinkable.

As Alec emerged from the tunnel, the sudden roar of an engine had him reaching for a gun that wasn’t there. The water from the road seemed to fall in slow motion, before gravity took hold, drenching him utterly. His vision slipped sideways as the hum of car batteries ripped through the air.

_He thrashed against the ropes as they tipped another bucket across his face. “КАКИЕ ФАЙЛЫ ВЫ ИМ ДАЛИ... МЫ ЗНАЕМ, ЧТО ВЫ БРИТАНСКИЙ ШПИОН”....the water flooded his throat, burned like acid in his lungs…“КАКИЕ ФАЙЛЫ ТЫ ДАЛ ИМ ПРЕДАТЕЛЕМ”...his diaphragm kicked as he fought to hold his breath, vision greying at the edges while the light swung… “МЫ ЗНАЕМ, ЧТО ТЫ ЯНУС, ЧТО ТЫ ИМ СКАЗАЛ”...sparks, flashes on the tiles….the jump leads cracked, the electricity tore through his body in searing, convulsing agony, tearing screams from between gritted teeth. It was like being flayed alive, as if every nerve had been stripped raw…”МЫ ЗНАЕМ, ЧТО ТЫ ЯНУС”…blood, flecked round the drain, dried splashes on their boots, on the walls…_

“Alec… Alec”

A new voice cut through the storm of shouts and crashing water. The sight of cracked white tiles dropped away as the world spun, and righted itself to reveal Q, standing a couple of feet from him.

“You had a flashback. You’re in London, and it’s quarter to midnight on March the 3rd.

Alec tipped his head back to rest on the bricks behind and tried to control his breathing. The blood in his ears roared like an express train, like the sea, like…

“Alec, stay with me.”

Q’s voice snapped him back into reality. His hand went instantly to the empty holster, and Alec was suddenly conscious of the fact it had been Q’s decision not to give him his gun back. _Чёрт._ He clenched his hands, in a futile attempt to stop the shaking, before shoving them in his pockets.

Glancing between the stained and dirty ceiling of the underpass and Q, who looked all the world like he belonged in an Oxbridge library, the strangeness of their situation suddenly registered in his brain and he chuckled weakly between pants.

“Of all the places you could be on a Friday night, you choose to stand around with my sorry self in a filthy tunnel? I thought you’d be at James’ by now.” He winced, thoughts of their argument ringing in his ears.

Q stared at him appraisingly.

“Well I wasn’t about to let you go back to a safehouse in this state. Look, I know that both of you are rather reeling from all this ‘back from the dead’ business, and I can’t even begin to imagine how you feel, but there could certainly have been a better time to have that argument.

Alec rubbed his face with the heels of his palms. _Christ Alec, score one on being an utter bastard._

He studied the scars across his hand, avoiding Q’s eyes.

“How...how is James?”

Q’s face softened.

“He’s going to be fine, James is more worried about you than anything else you silly sod. We decided I’ll sort you out while he goes off-grid for a couple of days, take some time to think. Oh and M told me that if I don’t take any holiday soon he’ll have to demote me _pour encourager les autres,_ so we can both crash at my flat for a while.”

* * *

They must have spent hours wandering the streets back to Q’s flat, taking endless detours around the city. Q said it helped to remember why they gave so much to the service, to see the people they killed to protect. In some way it was oddly peaceful, despite the cars and the crowds of drunk students. It wasn’t difficult to imagine Q haunting the city centre at night, quietly taking in the sight of hundreds of people who would sleep easy that night thanks to his actions.

Somewhere between passing the shell of the old Vauxhall headquarters and Churchill Gardens his hands had stopped shaking and they headed for home.

Alec didn’t know what to expect from Q’s flat, but having seen Q branch he had thought it would have far more computer screens. In reality, it reminded him somewhat of his grandparents’ dacha, filled with art and books and curios. Far removed from the soulless apartments double 0s tended to inhabit, this was a home, albeit one with biometric security, where at least one person had completely wrecked the wall throwing knives of various descriptions at it.

Q toed off his boots at the door, dropping his workbag onto the countertop.

“Bathroom’s at the end of the corridor, grab any different clothes you want from the big wardrobe.”

Q pottered round the kitchen making copious amounts of toast for the two of them, before curling up on the end of the sofa, laptop mostly hidden in his blanket cocoon.

Q smiled slightly as he reemerged from the corridor. Alec had the sneaking suspicion that he looked a little ridiculous, a supposedly fearsome and bloodthirsty double 0 in a slightly too short pair of James’ old jeans and a rather stretched t shirt that just had to be Q’s.

They sat there in the half dark, flicking through late night TV nonsense as the night ticked round to early morning. The low mutter quickly had the two of them dozing, and Q eventually dropped off entirely, glasses hanging askew on one ear. Alec mused into the dark as sleep crept up on him.

_…Janus, the codename was Janus…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Хуй тебе - fuck you  
> КАКИЕ ФАЙЛЫ ВЫ ИМ ДАЛИ... МЫ ЗНАЕМ, ЧТО ВЫ БРИТАНСКИЙ ШПИОН - What files did you give them, we know you're a British spy  
> КАКИЕ ФАЙЛЫ ТЫ ДАЛ ИМ ПРЕДАТЕЛЕМ - What files did you give them traitor  
> МЫ ЗНАЕМ, ЧТО ТЫ ЯНУС, ЧТО ТЫ ИМ СКАЗАЛ - We know you're Janus, what did you tell them  
> Чёрт - shit  
> 
> 
> Thank you everyone as always :)


	6. Fix Me Now

Alec jolted awake. Feigning sleep, he realised slowly that the dull hum of morning traffic was what had pulled him awake. It was almost an alien sound to him, so used to the deathly silence of Siberia. Even before he saw the note Q had left, the stillness of the air told him he was alone.

– _Gone to pick up my cats from Eve, will be back by lunchtime. Main armoury is in the draw under the bed, although I think J left a couple of knives and a Beretta down the side of the sofa. If you get bored there’s a heavy bag in the guest room. Q_ –

He wormed the Beretta out from the sofa cushions and shoved it into the back of his jeans.

If he was honest, Alec was surprised that Q hadn’t raced straight back into work. Despite the homeliness of his apartment, it was clear from a first glance that Q rarely got further than the living room when finally persuaded out of Six. He looked like the kind of person that needed dragging home and sitting on before he would sleep, however by the intermittent hints of James throughout the flat – his choice of whiskey and ammo (as well as a tendency to push all the furniture slightly left of centre) was unchanged – it seemed the Quartermaster had met his match.

Alec left the TV running quietly through back episodes of Spooks as he started to investigate Q’s kitchen. Despite James’ protestations otherwise, he was certainly capable of using a kitchen without burning it down. The key was avoiding the perils of the microwave, and the temptation to use it to experiment with new forms of improvised explosives. After all, in their line of work it did pay to have a variety of booby traps to set without leaving a trail or an identifying marker.

An extended rifle through Q’s cupboards eventually produced a box of tea that wasn’t flavoured with bergamot, and was robust enough to produce tea Russian style – that was, black as sin and sweetened with liberal quantities of strawberry jam.

Q’s security system was a covert masterpiece. The entire flat was wrapped in fine copper wire under the plaster, which continued through the triple glazed windows and in sections through the blast-proof front door, making it utterly impervious to signals from bugs.

The barrage of computers he had expected were concealed within a sliding section of the wall paneling, nearly invisible except for a slight change in the grain. Being a nosy bastard at the best of times, Alec reasoned that where there was one secret compartment there was probably far more, and made it his business to find them.

Most proved to be hidden caches of ammunition or weaponry of varying types, James being of the opinion that even at home you should never be more than two metres from a weapon. One particularly clever compartment, concealed behind a spring-loaded section of the architrave, produced three expertly turned lightsabers and a half finished custom suppressor.

He sat well out of view from the street below or the windows of the block opposite, alternately mocking the spy jargon on the TV and glancing through the news of the last 5 years. The important stuff had eventually filtered through to the prison guards’ gossip, but as the fourth or fifth retelling by word of mouth the truth tended to be rather diluted.

From his position cross-legged on the floor he caught sight of various magazines stashed on the underside of the shelf, that he had somehow missed the first time round.

They turned out to be various special editions of guns and ammo, a guilty pleasure of James’ since they were first in the SBS. Closer inspection revealed a series of notes between James and Q. One in particular caught his eye. The most ridiculous, massive Smith and Wesson revolver modified to carry an under-barrel shotgun. James had circled it in biro, and it was marked ‘Christmas :)’ in his spidery scrawl. Q had responded in turn with a rather emphatic ‘No Way’ but had clearly caved later, as ‘Ill make you an exploding pen instead’ was added in a purple marker.

The sudden echo of footsteps outside in the corridor had Alec reaching for his gun. The quiet clunk of the biometrics unlocking said without a doubt it was Q, who backed through the door moments later, arms full of a carrier with two rather grumpy cats.

Q let the cats out onto the hallway rug. The smaller of the two tabbies gave Alec an appraising look and sauntered off to a warm spot near the window.

“Is there any particular reason that Eve Moneypenny had your cats?”

Q laughed as he pulled out his computer array.

“She called me two days ago to say she needed cats on short notice. Turns out Eve was the idiot who told her mother she had cats so she’d stop asking about children, and then needed to produce said cats for a visit.”

Q pulled up the MI6 secure homepage on the main monitor, and started a hack programme running.

“Thank you for testing my new pressure sensors by the way”

“Which ones”

“The sensors in the wood where you were poking around my computers, I got an alert the second you touched it.”

Q tapped his phone on the desk, making the screen light up with an alert box.

Alec raised an eyebrow.

“Just be glad that you didn’t try and turn one on, the EMP would have knocked out everything electronic within half a kilometer.”

Q turned his attention back to the screen. Alec leant on the back of Q’s chair, watching as he picked his way between the defenses of the MI6 database.

“As it happens, what is the current jail sentence for hacking a spy agency Q?”

“Well ordinarily you’d mysteriously disappear, probably in the company of our cousins across the pond. If you build them a better one then turns out you get a fat government pension, and budget meetings every quarter. “

The programme stopped running.

“Fortunately for my mortgage I’m actually just hacking the laptop I left at work, the full mainframe would need way more power than I have here.”

Alec glanced between the documents that Q was pulling up on the monitors.

“Try searching for Janus”

Q frowned as he typed

“Janus, why?”

“Something I remembered from Russia. The SVR seemed to think I was an asset under the codename Janus. It was never mentioned in my briefing or dead-drops, so they must have heard it on SigInt somewhere.”

Q froze as he scanned the lines of code on his screen.

“There was a document of some kind in here. You can see where it’s been cut out of the mainframe.”

Q leant back and ran a hand through his hair.

“This was more than a black bag job Alec, even M doesn’t have the power to delete archive files.”

“Someone is trying to cover up any evidence of Janus.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a year! Thank you to everyone who keeps persevering with this fic, your kudos and comments mean the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Greetings all! My first work in the fandom, so critique would be much appreciated. Very much inspired by M's treatment of Silva. Im going to try and make this multi chapter, but we'll have to see how life in year 13 goes.


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